Tenda TEF1110P-8-63W — 10-Port 10/100M Desktop Switch with 8-Port PoE

Buying it, and when not to

The TEF1110P-8-63W is a 10-port 10/100M desktop switch with PoE on eight ports, sharing a 63W budget. Ten ports in total gives you eight powered drops plus uplinks.

This is the camera installer's switch. Eight cameras around a compound, a shop frontage or a small building, one cable each carrying video and power, one switch to protect with a UPS. It is also serviceable for a small site's access points where the units are modest. The appeal is simply that eight powered ports at this price is hard to beat, and for low-power devices the arithmetic works.

The arithmetic is where you have to be careful: 63W across eight ports averages under 8W a port, so eight genuinely hungry devices will not all run. If your cameras have heaters, infrared illuminators or pan-tilt motors, or if the drops are modern access points, size up - the TEF1118P-16-150W gives a much larger budget. The 10/100 ports are also a real limit for access points and high-bitrate cameras; for those, the gigabit TEG1110PF-8-120W is the correct unit, and the difference is less than one return visit. Buy this where the devices are small, the count is high and the budget is the binding constraint.